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Abstract

A crucial factor for prevention and immediate confrontation of destructive fires and their socioeconomic and environmental consequences constitutes the early detection and spatial localization of fire ignitions, so that the firefighting forces to be activated and act within the critical time of response. Thus, principal objective of the paper constitutes the spatial optimization of the most effective locations of watchtowers developing a constructive network for the immediate and early detection of forest fires. This optimization involves the exploration of the fewest locations for watchtowers with the maximum visible area and reduced degree of overlapping. The results highlighted 4 groups of watchtowers (20 observers in total) determining the optimum locations. The total visibility amounted to 70% of the island, while the visibility percentages per land cover are variable, since they are depended on the spatial structure of them. Definitely, the final selection of the final number and the spatial structure of the watchtowers purely constitute decisions of political nature and will.

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Study Area

Thasos island constitutes an island of the Northern Aegean and is located in the Northeastern part of Greece. The area of the island is 380 km2 and the perimeter amounts to 100 km. (e-Thasos.gr, 2015). The population of Thasos amounts to 13,770 residents and the corresponding population density is 36.23 residents per km2 (EL.STAT., 2015). The land cover types of the island are composed of 62.7% forests; 20.5% agricultural areas; 13.3% shrubs and 1% livestock area, arid land and residential area, respectively. Hence, we may observe that about 84% of the of the island comprises potentially highly flammable fuel. Therefore, the integrated prevention of forest fires is considered of primary importance, so that we may protect the environmental and ecological capital and efficiently safeguard human lives and property as well as the historical and cultural assets.